


Monochrome Spectrum

by Himitsu_Uragiri



Series: Resonance of a Glass Prism [2]
Category: Kuroko no Basuke | Kuroko's Basketball
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Art School, Childhood, Color Blindness, Falling In Love, M/M, MidoTaka Day, MidoTaka Week, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-10
Updated: 2017-06-10
Packaged: 2018-11-12 07:45:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,503
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11157372
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Himitsu_Uragiri/pseuds/Himitsu_Uragiri
Summary: “Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.” – Orhan Pamuk





	Monochrome Spectrum

**Author's Note:**

> Happy MidoTaka Day! So here's a companion fic to [Monochrome Rainbow](http://archiveofourown.org/works/4106569) though it can also be read as a standalone. Who would have guessed that two years later I would actually write a sequel of sorts to a random oneshot but hey, I liked how things turned out and a shout out for my super awesome beta for helping me through it! I love you Kimmy <3 This fic was also partly inspired by a manga called Tsumasaki Ni Kourozu and I've copied a certain element in it =w=

**“Painting is the silence of thought and the music of sight.” – Orhan Pamuk**

In those early amorphous years, when memory had just begun, when life was full of Beginnings with no Ends and everything was Forever, Kazunari thought his universe was perfect. When the everyday life was simple and when there were no complexities, he found those to be the most precious moments in the passage of time. For as long as Kazunari could recall, his sight had always been incomplete, though in his opinion he didn’t consider it a disability as much as owning a pair of outdated lenses, in the same fashion that cameras from the fifties were made – capturing images in greyscale. The world through his eyes though, was still whole and beautiful, with its panoramic view and phantom fishes that came out to play under the dusky mantle of night.

Things weren’t always so complicated. Days didn’t drag like a large boulder over his shoulder. Human beings, Kazunari unwittingly discovered, simply possessed dramatic flares innate to their genome structures. In a melodramatic surmise, he was denied of the luxury to return to the tranquillity of the Before.

Perhaps it was true that things could change in the fleeting course of a day, that a mere few hours could affect the outcome of an entire lifetime, and that when they did, those transient moments, like salvaged remains of a blazed house – the charred clock, the scorched furniture, the singed photographs – were routinely resurrected from the burnt wreckage and closely examined. Delicately preserved. Methodically accounted for. Just as those investigations were conducted by white-collared men, Kazunari too, replayed a single memory in his mind with the stuttered frequency of a vintage record player. It began with a simple, innocent question. One which he could never hope to withdraw.

In a room full of boisterous children at the day care centre, Kazunari was in the midst of a colouring activity. Puzzled over the box of crayons in various shades, all of the same dull monotonous hue, the printed drawing of a cartoon butterfly remained in its pristine albino state.

“Hey, Takao, could you hand me the green crayon?”

“Which one is it?”

The boy next to him gave a dubious stare that conveyed a questionable opinion on his intellect.

“Green like grass.”

“Grass is green?” At the new morsel of logic, his eyes grew wide with awe.

“Isn’t it obvious?” The brunette raised a thin brow comically, his tone of voice reaching a slightly higher pitch in his disbelief.

“Hmm … I can’t really tell the difference.” Kazunari sighed as he scrutinized all twelve crayons carefully.

Orange, yellow, blue, and purple. None of them particularly stood out. The other children saw fit to tease him for his apparent cluelessness. Red like an apple. Brown like tree bark. Blue like the sky. They each relayed their input with the same enthusiasm children reserved for juvenile games. Descriptions he could only register as an illogical language. It was the pivotal incident that made his parents recognise previously denied suspicions that something may be wrong with him. To acknowledge a part of him had malfunctioned. Like broken machinery that required the expert eye of a technician – and as all flawed machines were sent back to the factory, Kazunari too, faced a similar fate.  

Dourly, the white rectangular structure of the hospital loomed over him. Quiet and sombre as a gravestone it stood, nestled amongst corporate buildings with windows winking in the sunlight. His heart clenched in apprehension, as did his hold in his mother’s cold hand; fingers squeezing and digging into thin flesh as he was led through a pair of sliding glass doors. Warmly welcoming as the wide jaws of a monster that swallowed its prey whole. Inside the yawning cavity of the lobby, Kazunari smelt the icy breath of death, like mothballs in a closet. He saw the pale faces and sunken eyes of the living corpses, wretched souls imprisoned by despair. Heard their anguished moans as their diseased, infested innards took them apart piece by piece, little by little, every second of every day.

Fortunately, Kazunari was briskly led to a different wing of the hospital. All the same, the image of life’s frailty was seared into his mind with the everlasting cicatrix from a hot branding iron.

The wait for his turn was fairly quick, a pragmatic nurse with a practiced smile guided them to a small room. Four white walls boxed a doctor in, an aged man whose smile resembled a benevolent god awaited him, ready to bestow his destiny upon him – regardless of Kazunari’s opinions and wishes.  After a series of tests, a wretched prognosis was delivered with an almost cruel indifference by the god behind the large desk. A monotonous voice that casually announced the calamitous event of the Earth spiralling precariously out of orbit.

“He has monochromacy,” the doctor solemnly announced. The word had the air of a tomb about it. “He is limited to the ability to distinguish only one single frequency of the electromagnetic light spectrum. In basic terms, his colour vision is reduced to black, white, and grey shades,” he elaborated.

To his left, Kazunari’s mother emitted a strangled sound between a gasp and a choke. On his right, his father stared steely eyed at the wrinkled face of the certified beholder.

“Are you certain?” His father asked, as though through stern denial he would receive an alternate reply. As though he could change the truth by glaring at reality.

Kazunari understood he saw the world without colours. Just as his tacit admission that no one else could perceive the existence of the phantasmagorical fishes he could see. Fish that swam indulgently out from the body of a person in slumber, transforming the vast night sky into a giant aquarium. From large fish with scowling mouths, to delicate fishes the size of his hand. The mysterious eagle ray, the friendly bottlenose dolphin, the inquisitive angel fish, and the inexplicable in the clandestine darkness. Each one unique, from the prominent design of its scales to the elegant shape of its fins. Those fishes would sometimes leave trails of scales similar to sequins, flickering, fluttering away in the dark ocean of the night sky. Twinkling brilliance that easily rivalled that of the distant stars. They were ephemeral in the shades he now knew as black, grey and white. Charmed by the view he alone could see, Kazunari often disregarded the sandman’s knock of visitation on his door.

Children were fond of keeping secrets. The deeper one’s secret, the more solitary he became.

 

There was once a man, a father, who was of the notion that the small world revolved around him. There was once a wife, a mother, who was too inured to the bid and call of the righteously selfish. Their story was an achingly human one; of one who never compromised and the other, who lived by the law of obeisance. A precarious scale doomed to fail, Kazunari had prevised with the sensitive cognition unusually perceptive children possessed. But then again, it might have been a biased view, an erred diagnosis of a foolish outsider who knew not of the tricks behind the magic show. A son who adored his mother, Kazunari was. Hence, he found himself unfit for the impartial role of narrator. In spite of that, there was no less a personage other than himself to narrate the story. And shoulder the task he did, with all the grandeur of walking down the red carpet in a borrowed uniform.

On one tempestuous night, well past his bedtime, Kazunari overheard a conversation, a one-sided argument. Like flickering bait, the sound of subdued voices had lured him out of the sanctuary of his room. As he crept down the dim hallway, he fancied himself a cat burglar. With the door ajar, the light from his parents room glowed and beckoned to him like an enchanting will-o’-the-wisp.

“Why didn’t you tell me your late uncle had monochromacy?” The unmistakeable husk of his father’s voice interrogated.

“I-I didn’t ….”

“This is probably your fault. You robbed your son of a bright world!” He hissed in contempt.

“It’s not … I-“

“So how do you plan to fix this? How do you intend to make it up to your son?”

“I-I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.” The words fell out of her mouth like a mantra in a subdued, trembling tenure.

Soft and timid, the woman never had a chance to verbalise her stance. Regardless of right or wrong, the loyal subject would bend to the decree of the mighty king.

“Stop that infernal self-pity! Can’t you at least pull yourself together?”

From her shoulders, an earthquake overtook her body. Stifled sobs echoed pathetically through the tyrant’s selective hearing. The small curled up figure of his mother looked terribly fragile and glass like, as though it would shatter with the mere force of the wind. The slow ceiling fan sliced through the thick stale air into an unending spiral that spun steadily to the floor like the peeled skin of an endless potato.

Kazunari’s hands itched to comfort his mother, just as she did whenever he was upset, with gentle strokes down his back, warm and reassuring. But on that night he was frightened, afraid of the angry swollen red mask of the demon his father wore. A vulnerable child, Kazunari fled to the dark refuge of his room. Under the covers of his warm duvet, lying there coiled and breathing in his nervous cloying stench, he pretended he could see the world in colours and that everything was okay. He imagined his mother happy, her smile bright, and envisioned his father content, sipping coffee as he absorbed the contents of the newspaper.

But when it came to colours, only a yawning abyss greeted him.

The weeks that followed that pivotal afternoon, Kazunari had gone on several trips to the doctor. The bespectacled old man he once thought of as an aloof god had gradually become more of an uncle from an unrelated bloodline. The polished young nurse recognised his face and smiled amiably at him. The hospital though, remained as friendly as a graveyard. More often than naught, the answer to his childish inquiry regarding his frequent visits to the institution for the sick despite his seemingly healthy constitution all lead to the same pretence.

“To help you get better,” his mother said.

“It’s for your benefit,” his father insisted.

“The doctor will heal you,” the nurse confirmed.

“You have nothing to worry about,” the doctor declared.

But behind closed doors and around sharp corners he heard their gossiping whispers.

“Poor boy.”

“Such an unfortunate case.”

“It must be so hard on him.”

Doctors, nurses, aunts and uncles, and even nosy strangers, every single one of them, like professional thespian actors, performed a flawless quotidian show for him with their honey coated gestures. Meanwhile backstage, they expressed tombstone-like opinions. In their premature epitaph, they believed he was pitifully lacking and mourned for his loss. But, Kazunari often paused to wonder, how you could you lose something you never had to begin with?

 

“Mother, what do colours look like?” He inquired in the same casual fashion as one would when speaking of the weather.

As the sun began its slow descent in the western horizon at the end of the day, his mother arrived home early from work. In the kitchen, Kazunari sat by the dining table, swinging his legs back and forth playfully by the edge of the chair, his evening snack half consumed. At the sound of his voice, the frying pan in her hands tumbled noisily into the sink with a loud shriek of protest. Flustered, the tall woman turned slowly on her heels to address him with a smile that never quite reached her melancholic eyes.

For a long moment, she seemed lost within an internal strife before she finally spoke the words slowly, clearly, adopting a tone one reserved for when conversing with the hearing impaired.

“It looks … vibrant.”

“Vi-brant? That means bright right? I can see that, the sun is always so bright I can’t look at it for long!” He beamed with boyish confidence.

“Yes … yes it is … quite glaring … Now, finish your snack Kazunari.”

“Okay!”

Kazunari wondered curiously why people obsessed over the concept known as colours, until he too, with the inquisitiveness of a kitten, wanted to know. To _see_ for himself. Why did they have so many names? Why were there so many shades of the same colour? Colours became his day long obsession, joy and torture. If he could tell red from brown or blue from purple, then perhaps, he foolishly thought, he would be able to mend the strained relationship between his parents.

He became enamoured by the box of crayons and the children’s picture book that differentiated colours. However, only disappointment awaited him on the last page of the book and the crayon stubs. They were false hopes. Dreams without foundation, insubstantial as the fish he saw.

For a long time, he frequented the sterile cubicle of the doctor’s room – several months in the stifling measure of time, but the seconds often appeared to move sluggishly in the barren waiting area of the hospital as compared to when he was playing make-believe in his room. On one such ride home from the medical centre, time couldn’t have possibly dragged on longer as once again Kazunari was forced into the oversized shoes of the narrator. And his parents, the rogue actors who did not abide by the script but wrote their own compulsive theatrics.

“This is all your fault. You weren’t attentive enough. You should have known with _your_ family background,” the man behind the wheel said, like a priest spreading false preaches, condemning others to glorify his own selfish pride.

The woman on the passenger seat sat with her head bowed low, tongue a swollen mass of useless muscle that had forgotten how to form words. A shameful convict before the high jury.

“You’re really useless! It’s like you don’t care about your son.”

Silence filled the car like a saturated sponge, washed-up and cut like a knife through a soft object. The sun shone through the glass window with a shuddering sigh. That was the trouble with family, like invidious doctors, they knew just where it hurt most. To cut cleanly with the sharpened scalpel of a succinct sentence. A hundred times more effective than a clumsy sledgehammer, it was.

In the absence of colour discrimination, his mother’s tears resembled droplets of pearls. Sparkling, forlorn gifts of the deep sea rolled down her cheeks uselessly.

Kazunari grew up grappling with the ways of life. Trying in vain, over and over to achieve a semblance of normalcy in an average lifestyle. Laboured tirelessly to be the ideal child who could put a smile on his parents worn faces. He created a routine, followed it and kept at it religiously for Kazunari believed in part that his parents’ happiness was linked to the actions he performed. He padded around the house as quietly as he was able, and kept his voice down when he was playing war games with his toy soldiers. He woke up early every day, on Sundays even, and made his bed. He always counted up to thirty when he was brushing his teeth. He ate all his vegetables despite their unsavoury taste and cleaned up after himself, the scraps went into the trash and the plate into the sink. He was attentive in class and got along well with his friends. In these ways, Kazunari made his contribution to his parents’ well-being.

It was an effort he invested in in exchange for his acceptance of the fate duly conferred on him. Kazunari no longer sought to differentiate colours anymore. He wanted the trips to the hospital to come to an end, and he made it known. His mother grieved. His father left in an angry storm.

“I’m sorry,” he apologised to the desolate air of the empty room.

To them, to all and sundry, it was as though by being unable to see colours, all beauty and life itself was lost from the world. As though he looked out at everything with a vision smudged in grief. An erroneous verdict, without proper trial and evidence, far from the truth. Although Kazunari could not tell the red and the green light apart, he could still see the cars. Life, as he knew it, wasn’t significantly hindered. Kazunari could still smell the sweet fragrance of the cherry blossoms in spring. Hear the deafening wails of the cicadas in summer. Feel the cool droplets of rain on his palm in autumn. He had sturdy feet to take him to whichever destination he desired. He had two hands to hold precious, important things close to his beating heart. The source of Kazunari’s modest elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. Too old to be a kid, but too young to be a man, Kazunari understood the minisculeness of his existence. To live life to the fullest, he had decided between the forked paths. All he wished for was to see the light-hearted smiles on his parents’ faces.

Sentiments of a foolishly hopeful boy were trampled to a million little pieces at the grave announcement of a divorce. Fleetingly, redolent of a flickering light bulb, he imagined if he had not been born, his parent’s lives would have fared better. Mutely, the bulb short-circuited and the picture fell into darkness before he could define its details.

Sometimes – alone, admiring the scenery by the light of the moon – he wondered if he was deluded, or deluding himself. That the spectral fish he saw was all in his head, to fill the empty hole in the shape of the enigma known as colours had left behind. To make himself special to reassure a miserable subconscious side of himself that he was not acquainted with. In a way, it was, the same way the world was mere data sent by neurons from the retina to the brain for advanced analysis. To prove his theory, Kazunari reached out. The morose looking grouper fish slid through his fingers, cold and airy. Was this how it felt like to touch a ghost? As though detecting his unwelcomed caress and disapproving such desecration, the grouper flicked its fat tail and swam off with all the dignity of a haughty spoiled prince. Still, Kazunari felt its ghostly touch and it calmed him. 

 

Against all odds, Kazunari was accepted into a prestigious art school. Under perspicacious scrutiny, he had performed unfalteringly and had confounded all expectation. Certainly, he couldn’t survive in an art school, others had assumed with the universal vacuous track of mind. Proving them wrong brought liberating satisfaction, as Kazunari tore down societal misconception. There was more to the universe than just colourful paintings. Sculpture, ceramic art, calligraphy, and architecture, the university provided a wide range of artistic departments. Charcoal drawings were a wonderful instrument to project his thoughts, his personal favourite. To share the beauty of a world portrayed in a single light spectrum. A bold declaration in black and white that he didn’t need fluctuating colours.

Far from the home he grew up in, away from any and all people he knew, life began as a blank canvas. To pass unnoticed through an image obsessed civilization, to hold ordinary conversations, without the other party being wary of his condition and steering clear of topics related to colours – to avoid the very mention of that word as though it was taboo – was surprisingly liberating. It was a new scene, not the landscape born of and eroded by childhood tribulations, where hills fell into the sea in gestures of despair. A blank sheet he could draw as he saw fit.

Kazunari was never open about the affliction in his eyes, and yet, someone, somehow, had caught wind of it. The rumour spread, as quick and all-consuming as a raging fire, burning his landscape of open hills and balmy suns until there was nothing left but blackened soot scattered by the wind. Classmates gossiped in sibilant, papery whispers. In the background there was the constant high, whining mewl of local disapproval. They easily disregarded the fact that as a major in charcoal drawings, colours had nothing to do with his studies. Kazunari, who long knew to recognise and despise the contorted mask of synthetic, detached sympathy, could only forge a smile and relay equally vacant words.

“I’m fine, thanks.”

“It’s okay, I’m used to it.”

“I can order food myself.”

“Thanks for your concern.”

Flawlessly reciting pre-written script, Kazunari pondered if it wasn’t too late to pursue performing arts instead.

Stealthily, he slipped out of an afternoon class one day. It was the first time he entertained the growing urge to escape. Roaming long hallways aimlessly, Kazunari came across an empty room. In the stuffy deserted room, he wandered into cautiously. Stepping lightly, he left a track of footprints in the thick layer of dust that carpeted the floor. When Kazunari drew the withered, translucent curtains aside, a gossamer mantle of dust floated down like a friable blessing and gently smothered him. He watched as the miniscule particles glided lazily with the guide of gravity earthwards. Catching the sunlight that filtered through the foggy windows, they resembled sparkling rimes like snow. Throwing open the windows, Kazunari was greeted by the broad clear skies, almost blinding in its intensity. The room he was in overlooked the side of the building where the tall trees grew in abundance. A pathway wound through the maze of thick barks, and benches sat under the dappled shade of the dense leaves. The unoccupied room was perfumed with unworldly calm, as if it could detach itself and float away from the rest of the building.

Ever since its first discovery, Kazunari frequented the room on many occasions. So much so he could likely find his way there with his eyes closed. Sometimes, when Kazunari’s awareness was flitting between wake and sleep, he could see the faint shadow of his fish – if he could call it a fish at all. It was always blurred at the edges and ill-defined. No larger than his finger and oddly shaped, with neither head nor fin he could never guess its species. Still, he took to napping more often.

Solitude was a spirit of fickle evanescence. Just as how an empty blank, a gap in the interval or a cavity was destined to be artificially filled. One day, Kazunari found the unused room occupied. Vertical stacks of pristine white canvases lined the wall, a handful of easels stood in the corner, tubs of paint filled the dusted shelves, shiny new palettes and brushes brought in overnight magically, redolent of the mysterious Santa Claus leaving unwanted presents under the potted areca palm tree out of season. A sudden invasion Kazunari had no right to protest against, after all the room never belonged to him. Like a prime example of common platitudes, it mocked him.

In spite of that, he couldn’t stop. His legs had instinctively brought him to the door to that room before his brain even had a chance to catch up.

Someone was there, positioned strategically in the centre of the room. A tall, regal man whose eyes seemed to have lost their glint, who looked out at the world with a dull tint of disinterest that made even rainbows appear grey. The male’s stiff posture and reticent attitude translated to something solitary and apart. Curiosity lured Kazunari into the space he could no longer call his own as he muttered random excuses while slinking past the irritated man. Kazunari knew that face from an article in a magazine he read a long time ago, the bespectacled man was draped in a lush cloak of fame. In person, his quiet air was even more pronounced than his photograph had suggested. He was a person whose name he did not know, whose face he vaguely recalled.

A peculiar sensation took over his body, one that made him act and speak without his brain’s consent. He wanted to know more about the person who now occupied the room.

“Y-you! What do you think you’re doing?”

“It’s not _you_. My name’s Takao Kazunari. What’s yours?”

“I do not wish to associate myself with uncivil brats such as yourself.”

Laughter filled the still air of the dusty room. Kazunari belatedly realised it was his own.

Like any typical relationship, theirs began with an exchange of names, of personal designations. Midorima Shintarou sounded appropriately stiff for the towering artist. The myriad of expressions that flitted across his handsome features though, betrayed his previous prince-like aura. A diminished spark flashed behind his light irises and Kazunari wondered how they would appear when ignited.

“Aww, Shin-chan, loosen up a bit. You talk like an old man.”

“Wh-what did you call me?”

Midorima sputtered and gaped comically like a fish out of water. It was a stark contrast to the boring glare of his profile in the article. A look, Kazunari decided, suited him more. The distant artist looked more real, more human.

Chancing a glance out the window, he spotted a pair of dragonets. A shy spotted mandarin played hide and seek between the twisting tree branches, swimming in sync with a flashy mandarin dragonet. Kazunari knew they were commonly known as psychedelic mandarin fish due to their vivid colouration. Truly, the swirly stripes on the body and large pelvic fins of the mandarin dragonet glinted brightly like neon lights while the spots of the picturesque mandarin glowed with an electric property. Under the cool shade of the tree, two girls were gently cradled in the in the arms of Morpheus. The girls slept peacefully, leaning comfortably on each other.

A belated thought registered in his mind, Kazunari wouldn’t be able to doze in that room as often as he pleased anymore. And so he left, dejected by his own revelation.

Despite Midorima’s less than friendly nature, he found he couldn’t keep away. A part of him was strongly attached to the room. Another part of him was intrigued by the scenic canvases, they pulled him in with the muscular strength of gravity. Something about Midorima’s paintings sparked his childhood enthusiasm. On more than one occasion, an entire afternoon had been wasted away by staring at a single portrait. Kazunari doesn’t try to decipher the colours, but in some way he knew the spectrum blended in perfect harmony. His artwork soothed him in ways Kazunari could never fathom.

Afternoons in that room remained the same, yet different. Holding one-sided conversations with Midorima, admiring the scene by the window, gazing at artworks, building sand castles in the air or napping, generally idling time away. Unconsciously, the paramount activity Kazunari indulged in most was simply watching as Midorima fell to work with an eerie concentration that excluded everything else. At a leisurely pace, the once empty room filled like a child who grew with each passing day.

The occurrence took place on a typical day in the drawing room – Kazunari referred to it as such as of late. After all, it was longer a forgotten but inhabited room. Oftentimes, Midorima sat in front of an unstained canvas with his eyes closed in concentration for extensive amounts of time, visualizing scenes Kazunari couldn’t even begin imagine. On that day however, either due to the lethargic weather or lack of sleep – perhaps a little of both – upon entering what Kazunari considered their shared space, he found the normally rigid male asleep on the table by the window, the very same spot he enjoyed cat napping on. Head pillowed by his arms, spectacles askew on his nose, and breath billowing softly, he was the picture perfect scene of a lazy, tranquil afternoon. But more than the slumbering man’s unguarded expression, Kazunari’s awe was wholly captivated by the elegant fish in the room.

The sun streamed in like a flamboyant guest, not waiting for an invitation. Framed by the tall window, the whiz of an airplane left a trail of white smoke cleaving across the smooth firmament. The same disposition, the same solitude reminiscent of Midorima was woven into its own solemn pattern on the fish. It ambled gracefully in sullen circles, a trapped marine life in a confined aquarium. White stripes lined its sleek body, muscular tentacles sprouted from above its eyes and an imposing fan of prickly spines ran along its back and underbelly. Its showy pectoral fins were large and elongated, extending all the way to the fish’s translucent caudal fin. Kazunari found its lethal dorsal fins looked crown-like. Regal and handsome, the volitan lionfish echoed its distinguished master. It wasn’t the first time he’d seen a lionfish, but it was the most beautiful creature Kazunari had ever laid his eyes upon, an instant favourite.

Its scales caught the afternoon light and glistened, reflecting fractured flickers like broken glass on the walls. In the quietude, Kazunari thought he could hear the tiny air bubbles and the swish of its elegant tail as it swam in the air, as though he had his ear pressed to a conch shell. Like distant thunder, bubbles gurgled, undulated, the hypnotic sound of liquid colliding against liquid, rushing. Reverberating softly, a mere rippling of soothing sounds in a delicate ambience, it took to itself profundity. Taking the seat next to the slumbering male, Kazunari relinquished himself to the watery cocoon as it lulled him to sleep. In his dazed, semi-conscious state, he felt more than saw his fish slip out to join the forlorn lionfish in the deep ocean. A diminutive alien blob next to a kingly fish.

Kazunari passed the days in a kind of lotus-eater’s dream. Books, naps, snippets of correspondence, and a renewed interest in his old dusty box of charcoal pencils and yellowed sketchbooks, these disposed of the languid hours of daylight.

“What are you drawing?” It was a rare attempt at establishing a conversation on Midorima’s part.

Startled out of his singular concentration, Kazunari nearly lost his grip on the short charcoal pencil, a mere truncated remnant from vigorous use. Glancing between the man seated by the easel and his own sketchbook perched precariously on his lap, he readjusted his position on the window ledge.

“A lionfish.”

A sceptical look betrayed Midorima’s thoughts. Kazunari flipped his sketchbook, displayed it for his scrupulous inspection.

“I’m surprised you can draw that without a visual reference.”

Kazunari couldn’t help the childish delight that bubbled up in the form of laughter.

“Well, I see it often enough.” A secretive smile stole onto his lips.

 

Kazunari arrived as a grey afternoon chill descended upon the drawing room. The sky a bleak and charmless shade, it heralded the promise of rain. In the room, a painting of yestreen awaited to be looked upon with avidity.

“It’s amazing.” His lowered voice vibrated with reverence.

A banal comment, in his humble opinion, but one which came from the depths of his heart.

To talk about a painting was not only challenging but mayhap entirely pointless too. One could only communicate in words what words were capable of expressing, the limited capacity language could convey. Paintings on the other hand, had no correlation with linguistics. Artists were people who exposed an intimate perspective by rendering it visible through the tip of their brushes. A possibility of perception that would otherwise remain latent was manifested through their artwork. It was a form of dissertation that required neither letters nor words, which unveiled the world from an angle the universe itself did not present openly.

A landscape that defied the law of the land. A dreamscape that defied the law of gravity. The light of dusk produced a thousand charming effects. The simplicity yet breath-taking beauty of an everyday phenomenon captured and re-dreamed through a prism. Woven between the layers of paint was a part of Midorima himself, a subtle and kind sort of touch.

“You seem to use a lot of colours. They’re all in different shades.”

“Of course. Can’t you see?” The man adopted the tone of a condescending adult.

“Yeah … I can’t.” In the audience of such a spectacular masterpiece, he did not want to lie. To deceive. “I’m colour blind. I can only see shades of grey.” Desperately, he suppressed the tremor in his voice. Kazunari spoke a blunt honesty foreign to himself.

With the same caution animals in the wild exhibited, he examined Midorima’s reactions, from the twitch of his fingers down to the hitch in his breath. People often hid their disbelief behind a stammering veil of silence.

“Oh …” Midorima replied stupidly.

Were it not for his stuttering heart and sweaty palms, Kazunari would have found it hilarious.

Like the plague, he avoided the room for three days. His hesitant steps served no purpose than to prolong the inevitable. Once he finally managed to collect his cowardly self though, Kazunari discovered there was nothing to fear to begin with.

“T-Takao? You’re here?” Midorima inquired dubiously upon his untimely return.

“Of course. This is my favourite place to be in after all.”

“Well … that is … yesterday and before that … you didn’t …” Midorima struggled with his words, a blush painting his cheeks in a soft glow.

He made up a non-committal excuse about camping in the library and assignments. If a library was a place where history came to life, then surely the art room was where history was made.

“Shin-chan is kind.”

A warmth blossomed from the depths of his chest as he gazed upon the handsome face of the artist currently arranged in a quizzical expression. Kazunari allowed himself a chuckle. At the funny expression. At his own trepidation.

“It’s not a big deal … even like this, everything is beautiful. Even if I can’t see colours, I can see everything is a different shade. The sky isn’t just one shade. There are a thousand of shades I can’t even name. Like this … is fine.”

Midorima’s artwork reminded him to be honest and open with himself. Less secretive.

As superficial creatures, humans generally valued the obvious. The surge had more appeal than the withdrawal, the high tide more enticing to splash around in as compared to the low tide. Summer was favoured over the cold, and daytime over night. More growth occurred in winter than anyone could imagine, though. And in darkness, lurked creativity. Charcoal on paper, Kazunari drew, for the first time in a long while – since his first doodles as a child – the world, exactly as he saw it. High in the dark firmament, the moon indulged in a game of hide and seek between the drifting clouds. Amongst themselves, the stars gossiped and winked fervent secrets. Across the starry landscape a blue whale migrated. The gentle giant made its way slowly, mindful of the myriad of fish out stargazing. He drew the world as an infinite aquarium, a panorama unique to himself.

 

There was something beautiful about a blank canvas. The nothingness of the beginning that was so simple and breathtakingly pure. In the allure of the paint that changed its meaning and the hand that fabricated a story. Every piece shared the same origin, but at the end they were all uniquely different. Watching every new portrait, and landscape come to life was a thrilling adventure in and of itself. Every stroke of Midorima’s paintbrush was like the beguiling sequence of sentences strung together in an eloquent poem.

Vaguely aware of his surroundings, Kazunari roused himself when he noticed the tall figure by the supply shelf. Propped on the easel, a pristine canvas awaited the magical touch of the storyteller.

“Here. Paint however you please.” Midorima offered the palette, a cloaked demand.

To say he was surprised would be an understatement. Reacting on autopilot triggered by a dumbstruck daze, Kazunari accepted the fresh palette of colours.

The dizzying smell of paint was both familiar and alien to him. The polished surface of the wooden palette was slippery in his clammy, nervous hand. The brush like an exotic creature in his clumsy amateur hold. ‘ _All you need to paint is a few tools, a little instruction and a vision in your mind_ ,’ an artist once said, and so he did. Without knowing which tone was which. Traversing unfamiliar waters with a child’s reckless abandonment. Painting layer after layer, uninhibited, in a way he never would have thought possible. Kazunari allowed the talented brush to guide him and found the canvas slowly fill, waiting inside like words in a pen. He painted until the ghost of innate ideas seemed to be all that was left before he reluctantly set the brush and palette down, two new but intimate friends.

“It’s bad, isn’t it?” He attempted to make a jape of it, but Midorima surprised him once more.

“No … it’s beautiful.” They were eyes that told no lies, Midorima’s.

Treated with a rare smile by the stoic artist, Kazunari couldn’t keep the joy from spreading on his face. Like a caged bird, his heart fluttered.

“Thank you, Shin-chan.”

Life was dramatic, ironic. It threw lemons, sour but quenching. The world, the wheels of destiny, were certainly making a satirical soap opera of his life. There was no other explanation for it. The irony of how he avoided colours for the better half of his existence, only to fall in love with a painter who adored colours, of which half their names were gibberish to him. It was laughable. 

 

The portrait that sat unassumingly on the easel in the drawing room took his breath away. A large window frame. A boy with dark hair, headphones over his ears. Eyes downcast. Lips singing silently to the wind. A rainbow in the distance. A window through Midorima’s eyes.

“It’s my best painting. I wanted you to be the first to see it,” said man explained.

Surely, Kazunari’s expression resembled a comedic caricature. But words, language itself had left him. In its place, a tenderness gathered and threatened to burst out in a brilliant display of fireworks. For the longest time, Kazunari had avoided colours. Rejected their existence just as they had rejected him. He convinced himself that his limited ability to distinguish colours was not a shortcoming, but a gift that dyed the world in a shade unique to himself. However, Midorima’s sincerity taught him the truth, washed away the deceit he wove around himself. It was okay, it was fine to make mistakes, to not know and for things to still be normal. The world was shaped by the individual. Colours weren’t a part of his life but they were always there, and Kazunari found them in the subtle strokes of Midorima’s paintbrush.

 

“What do colours look like?” He inquired as he did, so many years ago.

“Your smile.” Midorima’s reply was succinct, his smile cryptic. There was a certain twinkle in his eyes.

Twinkle, Kazunari believed, was a word with crinkled, happy edges.

**Author's Note:**

> Takao's fish, as you would call it is actually a [Chromodoris Willani](https://featuredcreature.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/04/x7412483598_9def132415_z.jpg.pagespeed.ic.ReHjrvzb48.jpg) aka a very cute/pretty blue seaslug.  
> Thanks for reading and as always I'll be more than happy to hear your thoughts ^^


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